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Brenda Henry-Brown: "I Never Stop. I Can’t Afford To Stop.”

Ariel Edwards-Levy |
December 22, 2011 | 12:01 a.m. PST

Contributor

Faces of L.A.’s Jobless: A Neon Tommy Special Report >>>

Since losing her job, Brenda Henry-Brown has gotten her college degree and become more politically active, but says her age has prevented her from finding another job. (Photo by Rosa Treu)
Since losing her job, Brenda Henry-Brown has gotten her college degree and become more politically active, but says her age has prevented her from finding another job. (Photo by Rosa Treu)

It’s a rainy Friday afternoon at an Inglewood jobs center, and Brenda Henry-Brown is reminiscing. The sound brings her back to a sleepless night in her car last year, the rain tapping on the roof and keeping her awake.

Since losing her house and her job, she’d been bouncing from apartment to apartment, relying on her sister or her two adult sons when she couldn’t make ends meet. 

Eventually, embarrassed to ask for help again, she lived for six weeks in her car. She was rationing her gas money, dodging calls from collection agencies on bills she couldn’t afford to pay. “It’s been rough and tough,” she says. “Rough and tough.”

Jobless and mired in debt - it’s not the life Henry-Brown envisioned when she left Texas for Los Angeles in the summer of 1980.

Back then, California seemed like a land of opportunity. She had only a high school diploma at the time, but she’d already been promised a blue-collar job fabricating wires at the Lockheed aircraft plant in Burbank.

There, she met her late husband, a technician who built fuse boxes, and worked her way up to a job as a product support technician – “no more than a glorified secretary,” she says with a fond laugh, “but I loved it. And the pay was excellent, benefits were excellent, back in the day during that time period.”

Her job vanished 10 years later when the Lockheed plant closed in 1990, moving its operations to Palmdale and Marietta, Georgia.

For the next few years, she cycled through temp agencies and part-time work as a secretary, before landing in education – first as an assistant at a charter school, then doing office work for nearly seven years at the Los Angeles Unified School District.

She lost that job in 2005, and since hasn’t been able to find full-time work, or a job with benefits – not, she says, from lack of trying. 

She can’t put a number on the applications she’s submitted, she says, or the number of times she has visited WorkSource centers or the library to look for jobs. “I never stop,” she says. “I can’t afford to stop.”

A college degree, Henry-Brown thought, would make her a stronger candidate, and she had always wanted to finish her education. While still working at the LAUSD, she started on that path, earning an associate’s degree at Los Angeles Southwest College in 2003 and transferring to Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson the next year. She chose a major in English, her favorite subject, and began envisioning a brighter future.

“I was hoping for a better life for myself and my children, and I wanted to be an example for them,” she says. “I wanted to be able to get the kind of house that I would like to leave for them and just live that American Dream, you know?"

A battle with cancer forced her to put those dreams on hold. Without health benefits, she relied on a Medi-Cal program for treatment. “I was fortunate to get that, because without it I would have died,” she says. “Literally died. There’s nothing else.”

After losing her job she went back to school and in 2008, graduated. It’s clear she’s proud of the accomplishment but the addition to her resume has yet to net her a steady job. The degree allowed her to work part-time as a tutor, she says, but the hours weren’t enough and the job didn’t come with benefits. 

And along with her diploma came debt. Henry-Brown took out more student loans than she could afford. “Not having any money, you can't pay your bills, your credit gets bad,” she says. “I have student loans to pay - I cannot pay them. And it's just awful to have bill collectors call you and I just have to hang up in their faces because I'm tired of them calling me. I know I owe them but I don't have the money to pay."

Part of her frustration is that given the chance, she thinks, she’d make a good employee. She sees herself in an office job at a big company, solving problems and helping others.

She shows off a copy of her cover letter and resume, which are cleanly written and professional. "I have computer skills,” she says. “I have communication skills. I have a college degree...and I like working with the public. Even in bad situations, I think, I have the tolerance to solve the problem and make that person go away feeling happy."

But returning to the work force isn’t easy. She won’t give her exact age, but she says being older has made finding jobs a challenge. “Age discrimination is alive and well,” she says. “They don't want you if you're over 50. They don't care how much experience or education you have, they would rather pay someone younger less money to get the job done."

The search has taken its toll on her, in stress and depression, she says. She feels badly that she has had to rely on family, including the months she spent at her sister’s already crowded house in Compton. She credits her religion for helping her to cope. 

“My faith in God has really delivered me from all the hardships, because I could have just gave up and died,” she says. “You know, when you have low self-esteem, no energy, all kinds of things happen to your body. Your health deteriorates even faster and I just refused to let that happen."

She attends the Atherton Baptist Church in Hawthorne, she says, and then pauses. "I haven't been going to church as often as I should, because, well, I hate to say it - I haven't had money to put in church. I haven't had the gas to even drive to church. So, that's the bottom line."

Since losing her job, Henry-Jones says, she’s become more political, watching the news and joining Good Jobs LA, a grassroots protest organizing. She feels abandoned by politicians, especially those who’ve expressed opposition to President Obama’s jobs proposal. 

As a child, she says, she never imagined she would spend this much time unemployed.

"I think everybody agrees that this economy is not where it should be,” she says. “And this is America! People all around the world are watching us. We're supposed to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world.”

Despite her frustration, she says, she hasn’t given up on the state or the country.

“I love this place. I love California,” she says. “You couldn't ask for a better place to live when it comes to the weather. And the view, the ocean, you know...I just love it. I just wish I could afford a nice, big five- or six-bedroom house with a big backyard. My family, since it's huge, we could have big barbecues and fish fries instead of piling up in different families' homes, and have plenty space to move about and have nice swings and seesaws for the kids.”

“That's the American Dream but since this country's jobless rate is so high, the American Dream is just dying out,” she says, as the rain outside gives way to patchy sunshine. “But I still have hope, and I feel like change is coming."

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